This invention relates to eye glasses intended for use as an aid in sports such as golf.
Various attempts have been made to provide eye glasses with marking on their lenses to assist a wearer to hit a ball along the ground in an intended target line, such as is required for example in putting. Some of these prior attempts are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,953 (Griffith) issued Feb. 6, 1996; U.S. Pat. No. 4,991,849 (Fabanich) issued Feb. 12, 1991; U.S. Pat. No. 3,871,104 (Underhill, II) issued Mar. 18, 1975 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,264,002 (Palumbo) issued Aug. 2, 1966. However, for one reason or another, such prior proposals have not been particularly successful in practice.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide improved eye glasses of this kind.
According to the present invention, eye glasses which enable a wearer to hit a ball along the ground in a predetermined target line include a frame attachable to the wearer""s head and a pair of shaded lenses carried thereby, said pair of lenses comprising a lens for the wearer""s left eye and a lens for the wearer""s right eye, and one of the lenses having a horizontal unshaded transparent line extending laterally thereacross, and the other lenses having an unshaded transparent pinhole aligned with said transparent line on said one lens.
In use, the wearer looks down at the ball on the ground, and positions his or her head such that the transparent line is aligned with a target, the pinhole is seen in the transparent line, and the ball is seen in the pinhole and in the transparent line. The wearer then strikes the ball with a striker, which may be a putter, by moving the striker along the line defined by the transparent line.
The pair of shaded lenses may be provided by a sheet of plastic material, and the whole of the sheet of plastic material may be shaded. The slit may be about 0.01xe2x80x3 wide and the pinhole may have a diameter of about 0.25xe2x80x3.